Over on the Quick Books Community Briefing on Small Business Blog, Chloe DeVita has a post on one of my favorite small business subjects - Working IN your business versus ON your business. Chloe (Miss Enterprise - love that!) talks about the challenges of keeping your...
Marketing
Networking Tips
Over on Legal Ease, Allison Shields gives some great advice (Holiday Networking Tips, Networking for Shy People, and Networking: What do I say?) about networking. I have two other tips that I have picked up along the way that I would like to add. The first is to...
Bigger Or Better?
Catching up on my reading, I've noticed more people talking about the idea that bigger (in terms of market share) is not necessarily better. David Maister has an excellent post on his blog about the pursuit of growth for the sake of growth in professional...
Follow Your Mother’s (marketing) Advice
As I was looking through a package of advertisements from a chamber of commerce, I was reminded of the saying "actions speak louder than words". I don't know about you, but I was lucky enough to receive this advice 3 or 10 million times while growing up, so...
Automate Your Lead Qualification
Last week I spoke about the importance of the importance of educating your referral sources as well as your prospects. In today's Best-of Weekly, Marketing Sherpa has a case study (Open access until Oct. 29th) about a couple of companies who use automated e-mail...
Arm Your Volunteer Sales Force
Not getting the right kind of referrals is a common frustration for small business owners. In order to get the kind of referrals you want, you have to take the time to teach your referral sources how to spot your ideal prospect. Even though people love to give...
Strategy before Tactics
Yesterday, I saw what I thought was a good example of working with a strategic partner. I say “thought”, because on further review, it appears that the tactic of teaming with a strategic partner is not supported by any underlying marketing strategy. As I was leaving...